Compendium Maleficarum/Book 2/Chapter 13

by Francesco Maria Guazzo

Chapter XIII

After the Many Blasphemies Committed by Witches, the Demon at last Tries to Induce them to Kill themselves with their Own Hands.^[1]

Argument.

All who have given themselves to the devil and have been in bondage to his power confess that he keeps them in such a harsh and unjust slavery that he often puts it into their minds to take their own life, by stabbing, hanging, hurling themselves to the ground, or drowning, so that they may shake off the devil’s cruel yoke.

And when they make such attempts they are followed by such sudden and instantaneous death that no help, however promptly brought, can be of any avail. It is certain that the devil so insistently urges and goads them to this desperate course, so that, after having spent nearly their whole lives in wickedness and crime, witches may with their own hands cut off what little remains to them, and finally end their abominable lives in an eternal death. Thus the devil contrives that they whose lives were one continual crime shall in death suffer eternal punishment. For death, which men commonly term the end of life and all its misfortunes, is for these poor wretches but a beginning of misery. But the Divine Shepherd in His unspeakable mercy and lovingkindness again and again recalls to the fold His sheep that have been carried away by the wolf, and again He feeds them in the celestial pastures; and so when witches have been cast into prison and have confessed their sins, not grudgingly and under the stress of torture, but willingly and with penitential joy, it may well be said that they obtain the opportunity to avert so great and eternal a calamity from themselves at the small expense of their most wretched lives. For the bow does not always strike where it aims, neither is it always in Satan’s power to drive men where he will by his violence. He is permitted to tempt men, but not to coerce them. For this reason it is that he does not himself cast despairing souls against their wills into the waters, or hang them by a rope from a beam, or stab them with knives; but he only lures them to commit such madness. But all his wiles are often thwarted by God, who pities the folly of men and in His wisdom protects them, now in this way and now in that, as will be seen from the examples.

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Examples.

Remy says (III, 6) that he saw the body of a malefactor named Sedenarius hanging by the neck from a nail insecurely fixed in the wall, by means of a flimsy and rotten strip of underclothing, with his knees drawn up just clear of the floor. And in this way he had killed himself just as easily as if he had been hanged from a high beam with a short rope, and a skilful executioner had performed the operation. And nearly all such who kill themselves die just as quickly and easily.

I was at Hambach in Lower Germany in the boundaries of Flanders during the reign of the Serene Duke John William, of the Duchies of Cleves and Jülich, being there for the purpose of curing that same Duke, who was bewitched. A ninety-year-old sorcerer priest was summoned, named John, who had a cure of souls at a town named Lauch in the Archdiocese of Cologne; for, according to his own confession, he had by witchcraft made the Duke mad, fearful and panic-stricken. Three days before he was summoned by the Duke there appeared to him in his house at Lauch a demon, who told him that the Duke would shortly send to him, but warned him on no account to go, since he saw danger in it. To him the sorcerer answered: “What is that to you? I shall go where I wish.” Hearing this, the demon said no more but, as the witch himself told, pulled down his breeches (for he had taken the form of a nobleman with an attendant servant) and, turning his bum to him, let fly a fart of such an intolerable stink that the sorcerer could not be rid of that stench for three days, although he fumigated the house with incense and other rare perfumes. This ninety-year-old sorcerer came to the Duke and, being questioned, confessed that he had bewitched him, and that at that time he had invoked Lucifer, the Prince of the Devils, to inscribe those characters which comprised the spell. Afterwards, as he was sleeping in a tower in a state of despair because he was to be burned for the crime which he had confessed, a demon appeared to him and tempted him so that on Sunday morning, the 25th September of the year 1605 now passed, he cut his own throat with his knife; and although the wound was not serious enough to cause instant death, yet the demon, in that very act of desperation, seized violently on to his soul and carried it to hell, to the great astonishment of all. I saw the man dead, and still warm, lying on the straw: and as he had led the life of a beast, so he lay upon the provender of beasts. For so did Divine Justice dispose, which rewards every man according to his works; and God willed that he, who had for ninety years lived a follower of Satan, should also end his life at the hands of Satan.

Jeannette Gallee gave a very complete proof of one of my contentions. For she begged and entreated the magistrate who examined her not to delay her well-merited punishment any further, for she was well content to undergo it in order that she might the sooner expiate the terrible crimes which she confessed she had committed against God.

From the moment when she confessed her crimes to the Judge Nicole Morell did not cease to proclaim her happiness in thus being able first to make her peace with God and free herself from all her bondage to the devil. For she said that such had ever been her wish for three years, but she had been unable to accomplish it, or even to attempt it, because that enemy was so tenacious of his prey.

Catharine Latomia of Marques did not deny that for her horrible sins she deserved the extreme penalty and the utmost severity of her Judge; but she asked that, if there was left her any room for mercy, she might be granted one request, namely, that her death should be no longer deferred, so that she might stand as soon as possible before the tribunal of that Judge in Whom all her hope was placed, since her soul was very heavily laden.

Idatia of Miremont implored her Judge to sentence her to death as soon as possible; for she said that even if she were loosed from her bonds she would never be free to mend her ways and bring forth better fruit, because she had pledged her faith to the devil, as to an inexorable creditor, and could not escape her obligations to him as long as she lived.

Apollonie of Freising said that nothing could be more welcome to her than death, by which she could at last put an end to her most wicked life: for as long as she lived she would be unable to abstain from sin and witchcraft, since her demon was so assiduous a persuader, and she could only by death free herself from his domination. On the next day therefore she was the first of all to find a term to her unhappiness, and to open and lay bare her life to her Heavenly Father.

Antonia Mercatrix said that she desired nothing so much as to die placed on the fire as quickly as possible, since she knew that she had long justly deserved such a fate.

Because of his patricide and many foulest mischiefs wrought by witchcraft, the two Supreme Justiciars of Nancy passed a very heavy sentence upon Desiré Finance of the neighbourhood of Châtenois, namely, that he should be punished by being torn with red-hot pincers and then be cast alive on to the fire. Whether he was informed of this by his demon (as it has been and will be shown that it has happened to many), or whether his own consciousness of his horrible guilt foretold it, he determined to die at once by his own hand and so escape that punishment. So he took a knife which his gaoler had carelessly left in the bin with the bread, and thrust it as far as he could into his throat, and so died. In the same year there were in Lorraine more than fifteen who thus killed themselves to escape public execution. But, lest my readers’ minds be filled with horror, there is enough of this: let us turn to matters which had a more fortunate outcome.

Jeanne de Ban by her free confession gave evidence that her demon had never persuaded her so importunately to anything as he had that she should throw herself into a well or drown herself in a river, or hang herself with a rope, or destroy herself in some way or other, and that it was impossible to say how insistent he had been when he knew that she was about to be made a prisoner, just as if he saw a morsel being snatched from his jaws: and even after her imprisonment he had not relaxed his efforts, but had rather redoubled them and the more insistently tried to bring his wishes to accomplishment. And when she excused herself by saying that there was no means of killing herself in prison, he showed her in an obscure corner of the prison a neglected chain which she could, if she wished, put round her neck, and so strangle herself. In the end she had consented; but she was prevented from achieving her purpose by the fact that there was nothing from which to hang the chain.

In the same way he tried to persuade Anna Drigée. For he represented to her the horrible torture of the flames in which she was to die, the disgrace of being made a public example, and the infamy she would incur in the eyes of all; and so easily persuaded her to prevent all this by killing herself. But her desire (natural to all of us) to escape present misfortune was combated by the thought that she would certainly lose her soul’s safety; and that is a thing feared by even the most abandoned. Therefore her mind was drawn to a contrary decision, and she firmly rejected the demon’s advice that she should throw herself out of the prison window, which gave on to a precipice.

When he could by no argument bring Desiré Guerardu to commit this crime, the demon added as a further inducement that, if he killed himself, he would come to be a demon like himself, who would have power to fulfil all his wishes. But not even this promise could make him budge from his determination. For he had so often before been deceived by the wiles of the familiar that he suspected all such advice, holding it certain that the demon would keep no better faith with him in the future. For it belongs to the devil only to persuade, not to compel; as it is said in S. Matthew iv: “If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down.”

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1. “Induce them to kill themselves.” See Boguet, “An Examen of Witches” (John Rodker, 1929), c. xlv: “Satan often Kills Witches when they are in Prison, or else he Inspires them to Kill Themselves. Sometimes he Reveals what will Happen to them at their Deaths” (pp. 130–32).